A Stylistic Study Of Point Of View In Narrative Fiction

As an important aspect of narrative technique, point of view has been of central importance in twentieth-century criticism of the novel and has received much attention both from the novelist and the critic. In constructing the novel, the writer has to choose this or that type of point of view to tell his story, which is often the first and most fundamental decision he has to make in order to create certain stylistic effects. While for the critic, and the reader as well, point of view is always a crucial aspect that offers a way to explain how the meanings of texts are affected by means of manipulation of point of view.The fundamental position assumed throughout this thesis is that although point of view is itself nonverbal, it has to be conveyed through linguistic means. It is more than a structural category and is closely connected with language use. Based on this idea, this thesis consists of five parts, including the introduction, the conclusion and four chapters.As a starting point, the introduction discusses the significance of point of view in the composition and the interpretation of narrative fiction, and the reason why we have chosen this subject as a project of study.Chapter One offers preliminary ideas about the concepts involved in the discussion of point of view. It presents some general aspects of the discourse relations in narrative fiction, which includes at least three levels, and discusses the three senses of point of view as a confusing concept: spatio-temporal point of view, ideological point of view, and psychological (perceptual) point of view. After a brief overview of Friedman's eight-term typology, Genette's three-term typology, and Fowler'stwo-way typology, we propose a basic distinction between internal point of view and external point of view, each with its subcategories, and made a further exploration into the major characteristics and stylistic functions of each mode. We also understand that different types of point of view often serve different purposes, which give the author the freedom to make different choices according to his specific purposes and the special effects he intends to create in his work. Through this discussion, we have meant to gain a clear understanding of the concept of point of view as narrative technique, and thereby we aim to provide a suitable basis for the more detailed analyses that follow.Chapter Two begins with some general ideas about stylistics: its object of study, and its significance to the understanding of texts. As a step further, a selective overview of approaches to point of view is offered. The traditional approach has been carried out largely in the field of narratology, which has been concentrating on the typology of point of view as a mere structural category, with few efforts made to explore its linguistic properties; while the stylistic approach has paid special attention to the relationship between point of view and language use, and its stylistic functions as well. Since point of view is a point where the two approaches overlap, it is far from enough to study this issue solely in the field of narratology. Only by means of a stylistic analysis can we get a deeper insight into the nature of point of view.Chapter Three is the focus of this thesis. In this part we try to examine in a systematic way the linguistic properties of narrative point of view and their stylistic functions. The linguistic devices discussed in this chapter are the following: modes of speech andVIthought presentation, tense-aspect categories, deictic expressions, information sequencing, and mind-style. These linguistic devices often combine to help the novelist and the reader in their manipulation and identification of point of view. Though there might be other more subtle clues which we have failed to identify, we hope that the discussion of these major ones would offer us a deeper insight into how stylistic analysis can be used to help us see how point of view is signaled in texts.It must be stated that by focusing on the formal...